Write In and 750words.com

Ah, the joys of winter break. Today I am visiting my childhood friend Rhia and finally doing something we have planned for weeks: a write in. We settled down at a table in her office and sat in front of each other on our lap tops, writing and snacking and joking. There was hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks to stir in the flavor, and gingerbread cookies to hold us over until the homemade chicken soup finished simmering on the stove. I find this to be a very relaxing and fun way to keep each other accountable and quickly remedy writers' block, which has been a lot of trouble lately.

She told me about this site, 750words, where people can go and just write as a private exercise. Supposedly, 250 words is about what will fit onto one (I assume handwritten) page. Writing three pages of just whatever helps to get the blood going, so to speak, like a good stretch does after getting out of bed. Hopefully, this will help me power through today's goal.

Now, onward to finishing the first draft of my zombie novella!

I Wish I Could Dam Inspiration

After writing the bit in my last post about asking deeper questions in my zombie novella, I got flooded with ideas for the story. Some are awesome, some are just twisted, and I wish I had them all a week ago. Writers' block is a major foe of mine. I consider myself to be a lazy individual plagued by brilliance and stubbornness (as well as humility), which seem to lead me into a trap. A new idea will pop into my head, and a rush of inspiration and a few hours later when it is gone I have no idea where to go from there so I scrap the entire project.

I wish I could deposit these bursts of creative energy into a reservoir, like how we dam rivers so that we have dependable sources of water. I could save the ideas for later when I was out of ideas or ways to pull several wonderful concepts together. It would be much more efficient than the stop and go pace I am on. I guess this is something that the writing process teaches you to get over, and as a writer I haven't worked long enough to get past this lapse in skill. But I'm not going to let that stop me, as writing is to me one of the most elegantly beautiful forms of expression.

What do you do to keep the ideas flowing and to avoid prolonged bouts of writer's block? Are you a writer that either enjoys this blog or thinks that I would enjoy yours? Please share in the comments section below.